“Fearful? Of what?”

“If her son comes to power, tradition dictates that he kill his brothers, to protect his right to the throne. And if he does not come to power, but rather a son of the previous concubine, then Hurrem and all of her children are surely finished.”

There is a sound of splashing. Some of the girls are playing in the stream: Although it is early in the day, it is already warm. Laughter drifts toward them but Bilhah feels suddenly cold. And this was the place she felt safe in?

Aisha looks thoughtful. “She may sleep on silk, but she does not sleep at all. She schemes. She schemes of how she can save her children from death.”

Bilhah feels as if she has been hit. Her head reels. “But—”

“They do not believe that they are cruel. They are merciful.”

Bilhah tugs on a handful of grass and pulls. The sufi sage would not approve, but what is a blade of grass in a palace that murders its children?

“Merciful?”

“If the sultan does not kill all of his rivals, there will be civil war. And then, instead of just five corpses there will be thousands, littering the streets of Istanbul.”

She shakes her head, filled with disgust. “And you?”

They stand up, both of them, in an unspoken move. It is too difficult to stay in one place. They walk toward a copse of almond trees.

“How do you move in these circles? So close to power.”

Aisha shrugs. “Close, but still a servant. Just the astrologer, not much different from the woman who comes to inform her about next month’s fashions.”

Bilhah opens her mouth to protest, but Aisha makes a face. “It helps that I am ugly. And it helps that most of my words are honeyed.

“Every time I open my mouth, a prickle of excitement rushes through me. Besides, here and there, I wield fear. I may be nothing in comparison to her, but a word from me fills her with dread or hope.”

“And how do you know what the stars hold in store?”

“I study. I study the ancient books and I know the interactions between the different planets and what an alignment means, an eclipse, all of it. The passing of the seasons is a journey through different energies, different possibilities of our fate, and of our ability to fashion and shape it.

“I try to protect her. For it is not easy to live this way. Any person might kill you and any sip of wine may be laced with belladonna.”

Bilhah picks up a faded blossom and crushes it between her fingers. “If people liked her — loved her — she would not be so afraid.”

“Impossible. To be known is to be immodest. It would cheapen her in the eyes of the world. There is a reason why she is hidden away.”

“But she can be known by her deeds.”

“How?”

Bilhah thinks. “It is easy to kill a woman you have never seen or met, who does not have eyes that stare out at you. And if she is not known, then she can be felt. Every water fountain in the city must be a gift from her to the people. So that every time the sun beats down and a man feels that burning of a parched throat and a swollen tongue, he will drink and find relief and inside, he will bless and thank his benefactor.”

Aisha stands still and stares.

Bilhah’s mind begins working furiously. “Water fountains. Mosques. Soup kitchens. And walls. City walls, that inspire a feeling of protection and safety.”

“Walls,” Aisha repeats. “Walls. It is an idea.”

She takes Bilhah’s hand and squeezes. “I think you have already started to repay me for these lessons.”

***

It is not only that if they walk enough, the man will tire and cease his questions. That is not the only reason why Eliyahu half pulls, half hauls Yannai out of his cave each day, hands him a birch staff, and insists that he walk.

And it is not only because the man becomes crotchety when stuck inside and Eliyahu bristles as he sees the man slowly take over his home, his sanctuary. It is for his sake, surely, for if the man does not move, then he will not heal.

At first, Yannai could go no further than the sheep pen. Eliyahu pointed out the ewes, and how close they are to their time, and Yannai nods and says, Dovid Hamelech was also a shepherd.

“I am not a shepherd. I simply have six sheep.”

The prospect, now, is becoming attractive to him. If he had a flock, he would simply roam the countryside, not tied down even to a cave. For he is starting to feel that even a cave causes sorrow, when it is all one has.

But such is not the way. You go out for a walk and pick up a stick or a stone, and it is nothing, nothing alive at all, but the stone is just the right weight or shape and it feels comfortable or comforting. And the stick is something to lean on, and it is as if the Almighty is saying, you may not have a grandfather or even a father to lean upon, but here, there is still a gift from Me.

Next to him, Yannai grunts. He is tiring. Soon he will want to sit down and simply talk, for this is what the man is best at, Eliyahu has discovered, and it is the best way to distract Yannai from the incessant questions. A tangle of words: stories and thoughts and history and nature. Usually, Eliyahu begins by listening, but then the words carry him off on his own thoughts. He helps Yannai to sit down and picks up a stone absentmindedly.

If a stone is a gift, then maybe Yannai…

They both look up when they hear the whinnying of a horse. It is that woman again. She has taken to riding on this path most mornings and it is on the tip of Eliyahu’s lips to ask her for help in transporting Yannai back home.

She rides to the summit and then turns and carefully but steadily, rides back down the steep incline. First Yannai and then this woman. Two stones fallen into a clear, still pond, disturbing the image that was reflected upon the water.

***

Eliyahu does not know what rouses him from sleep in the middle of the night. All is quiet. Yannai is sleeping soundly, arms lifted above his head like a baby. Outside are the usual night sounds.

He should simply turn over, pull his sheepskin blanket over him, and return to his slumber. Instead, he quickly washes his hands in the pitcher of water and pulls himself up and through the entrance of the cave.

Outside, he hurries up the incline to the sheep pen. It is as he expected. One of the ewes is pawing the ground, throwing her head from side to side. Eliyahu breaks out into a smile. Lambing season.

He piles up a heap of hay in the corner of the pen and settles down to wait. Soon enough, his eyes begin to close and he sinks into sleep. He jolts awake to the sound of a scream. He jumps up, heart banging in his chest. He looks around, but all is dark and for a moment, he does not know where he is, just that he is cold and there is something around him that is in distress.

He feels the hay, the rough wood of the pen and he remembers. The ewe. The ewe is readying itself to lamb. He blinks once, twice, adjusting to the darkness, which feels thick and unwelcoming.

He looks at her. “Has your time come?” he whispers.

There, in the far corner of the pen, is the ewe. The rest of the sheep have distanced themselves and it is alone.

Quietly, he draws closer. Through the shapelessness of dark, he sees its knees buckle, first the front and then the back; it lies down onto its side, head turned in the air, as if it cannot breathe.

He has lambed sheep before. But still, there is something that fills him with trepidation.

Time passes. The ewe holds her head in the air, and then lays it onto the ground, as if it is weary of the pain, maybe weary of the world.

It does not even make a sound, the quiet rings in his ears. Eliyahu puts one hand on the ewe’s haunches and feels its side moving up and down as it draws breath. Up and down, up and down.

He is going to lose her. And what is she, only a sheep, but the knowledge is stuck in his throat making it hard for him to breathe. He will lose the ewe and he will lose this lamb — maybe there are two. He kneels down beside the ewe, onto the wet night grass.

Small legs, bent at the knees. He grasps hold of them both, panting with the effort. The ewe moans and then screams. She drops her head onto the grass. Her breathing begins to slow. His arms are slick and it is hard to grip, but he must help this lamb safely into the world if it is the last thing he does, if it is the only thing he does.

A terrible sound and then, all of a sudden, the lamb is there, on the grass before him. It does not move. He moves his hands over it, as if doing so will pull away the web of death that settles slow and silent.

It is dead. There was no use for all his efforts. The creature is dead.

It comes to him, even as he tries to forget, to turn his mind elsewhere. As he kneels on the grass, the lamb before him, the night dew seeping into his skin and freezing him, it comes to him. Tzipora’s face, flushed with fever. She would suddenly open her eyes and jerk herself forward. He didn’t know what she wanted, if something was hurting her, some sudden pain. And then she spoke and he realized that she was trying to sit up as a gesture of respect.

“There is nobody here,” he had told her.

It wasn’t true of course. He was there. And the baby, three days old but strangely forgotten: a presence in a corner of the room, that here and there woke up to cry and eat, and was settled and then faded again, even though for nine months, he was all that they had thought of together.

She jerked up again, and her lips moved and her eyes were open wide. “Papa.”

He was afraid to talk, then. Her father had passed away years ago, before they had even met, and it was her aunt and uncle who had brought her to Damascus and walked her under the chuppah before they had moved to the Holy Land. She spoke of her father only rarely, but at that moment he was in the room with them, and Eliyahu had known that he was holding out his hand, easing her passage to the Next World.

For a moment, he had been filled with gratitude that she was not going alone. A woman goes from her father’s house to her husband’s. But then the irony had struck. She was moving in the wrong direction. From her husband’s house, she was traveling to the home of her father, his resting place on high, and he had wanted to scream — it’s wrong, it’s all wrong, it’s the wrong way around. He had wanted to wave his hands and dismiss the presence that had appeared, who was more visible to Tzipora than he.

He drops his head into his arms, and his shoulders shake, but there are no tears, only a cold, choking sensation. He stays there for a long time, until a faint sound rouses him. He looks up. The moon has drifted across the sky, and instead of the pitch black of earlier, the dewdrops reflect a white luster. But even in this halfway place — not light as much as a darkness that has been penetrated by silver — he can see the newborn lamb lift its head and scramble to its feet.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 800)